


Lady of the Wood

by 221b_hound



Series: Galadriel's Promise [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Genre: 221bMerrick, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angst, BAMF John, Crossover, Feels, Happy Ending, Hobbitlock, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Promises, Sherlock Feels, destined lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 20:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is running. He is falling. He is failing. He is going to die, and John is going to die, and it will all have been for nothing.</p><p>Until there is a light, and a tall woman with a voice he believes in, who tells him of a promise.</p><p>“The one you love was known to me in another time, by another name. The one you love asked of me a boon, in the days gone by.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady of the Wood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtlinMerrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick/gifts).



> I posted on LJ that my hubby had done one of those quizzes that says which fictional character you are. He turned out to be SHerlock Holmes (lucky me!). I turned out to be Galadriel, which is not in the least bit likely (though if she'd been played by Dawn French, maybe).
> 
> Atlinmerrick challenged me to write a fic.
> 
> This is not the fic I expected to come out of that prompt. But it's the one we have.

He was running; still running; forever running, it seemed. Once upon a time it had been fun. Once upon time it was a challenge and a joy, with the Work and the Hunt and Right on his side, with that man who ran beside him. Running through the streets and the towers and the forest of concrete and brick.

He ran alone now. He’d been alone for a long time. Sometimes he nearly forgot why he was running at all.

Then he’d remember. That steps had once pounded alongside his. That he had not always been alone. That somewhere, those feet still trod the world. Not running, perhaps, but not fallen. Not yet.

Not if he could just keep ahead. _One step ahead._

But he was losing ground. The trees and shrubs and vines and tangled undergrowth hampered his every move and he hated it, with a passion. He missed his city, his own known forest of a city.

This forest, this mesh of trees and foliage was going to catch him fast and he’d be trapped, like a stupid, panicking fly, while the glistening black spider came up on him fast. Ate him whole.

Thin, green branches whipped into his face, his eyes and gasping, he fell. He tried to stand and couldn’t, so he took to crawling on his belly, over leaves and sticks and rocks and mulch.

Behind him, the beast was coming. The glistening black beast. With his gun and his Bowie knife and his knowledge that the Great Detective was not after all dead, and soon the running would be over.

And soon after that, his friend ( _his dear, his beloved, no, no, no…)_ would be gone, too, because the beast was nothing if not a vindictive brute.

His hands squelched in moss, in mud, in water, and he dragged himself into it, thinking only that it might obscure his tracks. Might buy him time to think of something.

_Think, think, think!_

Too much running. Too much thinking, too, and it had almost worked, almost, almost, but he was so tired, so lonely, so lost, so afraid…

A bark of triumph came from behind, and a laugh, and a terrifying whine as the first bullet ploughed into the water by his head.

“You really should have just jumped, all proper-like, Holmes, and saved yourself the trouble,” said the beast, “But it’s been a laugh, eh? I love a good hunt. Guess what I’m going to do for you?”

Sherlock Holmes dragged himself forward through the water. There was a lichen covered rock ahead, and if he could just reach it, just get to cover, there might be hope. There might be a way home, yet.

“I’m going to tell John Watson how you lied to him. And after he’s over being pissed off and is all razzle-dazzle cheery that you’re not dead after all, I’m going to tell him how I shot you through the head in a forest in Hungary and left your body for the carrion crows.”

Sherlock sobbed and crawled and the water exploded in front of his face with another bullet.

“I’ll even take photos to show him. The look on his face will be hilarious. I’m sorry Jim doesn’t get to see it. I owe you for Jim.”

Sherlock sagged in the water, sank. _No. No. No._

“Of course, your mate won’t suffer very long. I’ll shoot him in the face straight after. I just wanted you to know that. I’m not a _cruel_ man.”

Sherlock’s fist closed over a stone, and he knew he didn’t have the strength to throw it, but maybe Sebastian Moran would want to come close, to gloat over his victory before pulling the trigger. Perhaps there would be a chance to…

“Hold still for the camera, you fucker,” sneered Moran, raising his phone to take a picture, his rifle held comfortably in the crook of his arm. Click. Click.

Sherlock slowly lifted his arm out of the water, the rock in his fist.

“Aw, look at you. Still trying. Good on you. I’ll be sure to tell John you tried.”

Sebastian Moran raised the rifle.

Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes, because he did not want Sebastian Moran to be the last thing he saw. Instead, he called it up, the face he knew better than his own. Worn and expressive and wonderful and beloved. _John._

He heard the hammer click back.

_John. I’m sorry. I tried to save us._

And then…

And then…

The light burned so bright that even behind his closed lids he saw it. Light so bright that he could see the pink of his own eyelids, the miniature rivers of veins under the skin, the pulse of the blood through those fine, tiny tributaries.

Everything changed.

The sound of the river through which he crawled was soft and gentle, and not the sound of swamp and his imminent death. The sound of the forest was a sigh, and not the hiss of his failure.

“Open your eyes, Sherlock Holmes of London. You are safe, here.”

A woman’s voice, deep and soft and resonant and reassuring. He had never believed in a voice as strongly in his life (except for one voice, one, that he believed in, against his better judgment, and that he feared to never hear again).

Sherlock Holmes opened his eyes.

The woman was tall, her golden hair long, her slender limbs clad in silk or a mist or fine filigree or an ever-changing web of threads, it was hard to be sure. She was beautiful, but not with any human beauty, which to tell the truth he’d never been much impressed by. Her beauty was ageless and filled with intelligence and kindness and power and an almost terrifying _knowledge_. She _knew_ things. About the world. About him.

“Do not be afraid, Sherlock Holmes.”

“I’m not afraid,” he lied.

She smiled, warm and slow, like he was a defiant child, and she an indulgent mother.

“You fear more for your beloved than for yourself.”

He gasped at that, sharp and, yes, afraid.

“He is safe,” she said, “He guards your hearth, and your heart, yet. Your John Watson has not forsaken you. He believes in you.”

Sherlock couldn’t help the sob that escaped him. “He shouldn’t.”

She smiled again. “Do not doubt his courage. Nor his mind. He knows you live.”

Another sob.

“He understands,” she said, “For he would do the same for you. He would die that you may live.”

“He mustn’t.”

“Rise from the water, Sherlock Holmes.”

Stumbling, he obeyed, as though his limbs had no choice in the matter. He doubted he could have stood, otherwise.

The lady held out her hand, not for him to take, but to show that she came open-handed to this encounter. “The one you love was known to me in another time, by another name. The one you love asked of me a boon, in the days gone by.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Protect my home, Lady, he asked, if you can. For my home is my heart, and if my heart is safe while I wander, I can never be lost.”

“Please, I…”

“Do you think, Sherlock Holmes, that this is the first life you and he have lived together? Can you know so little of the ways of the wide world?”

Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, to defy what she implied, but from his lips fell: “I want to go home.”

“You shall,” she promised, and he believed her, he believed her, he did.

“He is not waiting for you,” she said, and he cried out, beginning to break, because he believed that too.

“Hush, hush, and do not be afraid. Did I not tell you that you and he belong together? Did I not tell you of the boon he asked of me?”

“He’s alive. You promise he’s alive?”

“He lives, and he knows that you also live, and he has not abandoned you. In all his lives, he is steadfast. He is faithful. His home and his heart are one and the same, and while they are safe, he cannot be lost.”

Sherlock blinked and tried not to despair.

“Have you faith, also?” she asked him.

“In him? Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Then fear not, Sherlock Holmes, and be patient. I have kept his heart safe for him, all these many lives, while he wanders, or while his heart wanders, too, also far from home, for this is not the first time you and he have suffered this trial. It will not be the last. Yet I leave a part of my own self here, a sentinel to keep watch over you both, as I promised his Halfling soul I would.”

Sherlock took a deep, shuddering breath. Another. He reminded himself that he was a man of science, a man of logic, a man of relentless reality.

“Please,” he said, ignoring all that he tried to remind himself of, “If I die today. Please keep him safe.”

Because he was also a man of heart, of love, of hope. _If this is a psychosis from bleeding to death of gunshot wounds in a godforsaken filthy creek in a manky forest on foreign soil, let me believe in this before I die. That John is safe._

That smile, again, benevolent and knowing, that filled him with awe and terror and faith.

“He chose his heart well,” she said, and he almost wept.

The pearlescent light began to fade, and the ordinary late afternoon sun of a Hungarian autumn took its place. A lesser light, though still glowing golden through the yellow and red leaves. The last light, he thought, he would ever see.

He heard the hammer click.

He closed his eyes. John was still there in his mind, perfect in his imperfections. His heart. His home.

He heard the explosion, the awful spit of gunfire, but he did not feel any pain.

Instead, his ringing ears heard a clatter, metal on rock, then the thump of flesh on the ground, and he opened his eyes to see Sebastian Moran staring up at him, eyes blank as polished glass.

Feet on leaves, then, that steady step he knew from seventeen stairs, from streets and pavements, from days of running at his side. Even on fallen leaves and mulch in this foreign place, he would know that step anywhere.

Sherlock Holmes looked up and John Watson, who was satisfied that his aim was still true and that Moran was dead, stepped from the banks and into the shallow water. The gun he tossed aside, so that when Sherlock stumbled towards him, fell into his arms, John was ready. To catch. To hold. To clasp close.

“Christ, you’re a hard man to find,” said John, voice choking thick on emotion.

Sherlock clung to him, tight, struggling for breath.

“Are you hurt?” John drew back, trying to see, but Sherlock could not bear the space between them. He clutched harder still.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“You sound done in to me,” said John.

“If you’re well, then nothing can be wrong,” said Sherlock, “If you’re safe, I can’t be lost.”

“Well then,” said John, kissing Sherlock’s grimy brow, his too-thin face, “Then we can’t be lost.”

For several minutes they stood there, the water flowing fast around their feet, the autumnal light glowing like a hearth through the trees.

“Is it over?” John asked, “Is it done?" 

“Yes. He was the last.”

“Then let’s go home,” said John.

_I already am._

“Yes. Let’s.”

With John’s arms around him, they stepped from the river. John bent to collect his gun, to smash Moran’s phone with the butt and throw the shards of it into the river. They left the beast behind on the banks of that river which was swelling, rising up to wash the body away, as they walked into the trees, which seems to bend and move to show them the way back to the village, to the car John had left by the inn.

Sherlock thought he heard a voice like earth and sky, like water and clouds, like honey and bees and flowers, laugh gently. John smiled at him, as though he heard it too.

“She promised me, once,” whispered John, “I’ll forget again soon. I always do. But the Lady of Light keeps her promises. Galadriel has never let us down.”

“She can’t exist.”

“Probably not.” John helped Sherlock into the jeep. “Come on, I have lodgings in Szeged. It’s not far. Night is falling.”

And later, later, in a warm room with a fire and clean sheets, at journey’s end, they slept, safe in each other’s arms.

Just as the Lady of Light, the Lady of the Wood, had promised.


End file.
